


in your absence

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Episode: s02e19 The Dirty Half Dozen, F/M, Gen, Post-Episode: s02e19 The Dirty Half Dozen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 11:51:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11989233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: You can't go home again. (Especially when your home has just been blown out of the air in a fiery explosion.)





	in your absence

**Author's Note:**

> So I started this more than a year and a half ago for the prompt "I saved you a seat." Hopefully it was worth the wait.

Ward is talking, saying something about family and ruining it all. Jemma doesn’t pay attention. The others are too happy to fill the space with killer looks and vague threats to his person and don’t seem to notice her silence in the midst of it all.

She picks at the cuff of her sleeve. This is one of Skye’s shirts, as all of Jemma’s were placed in storage when the team made the move to the Playground and no one can quite figure, in all the chaos, where they’ve gotten to. Jemma doesn’t mind, truly. It’s not as though she was there to claim her things and, given the last several months, she’s lost more weight than she could really afford to. Better that one of Skye’s shirts fit her wrong than one of her own.

“You threw me out of this very plane!” Fitz yells suddenly and Jemma’s attention returns to the conversation with some alarm; she hadn’t heard about that.

“Over the water,” Ward says. It’s a paltry defense but the audacious sincerity with which it’s delivered is really too much. Jemma can’t help a faint smile.

Ward catches it—because of course he does—and smiles warmly in return. Whether the others saw her own expression is questionable, but they certainly see his and that puts an end to the briefing. Fitz and Skye flank Jemma as they make their way to the lab to double-check everything’s ready.

She wonders if Fitz is regretting forcing her along. It must have been a terrible effort, convincing not only her to come but Coulson to allow it as well. By all rights, she should be at the Playground, recovering from her imprisonment, but Fitz was determined and, after so long, she couldn’t refuse him. She knows why he wants her here; it’s a chance for the old team to reconnect.

It’s terribly sweet of Fitz to try, but Jemma’s heart just isn’t in it.

When the time comes to board the Quinjet and get underway, Jemma follows the others swiftly—but not swiftly enough.

She enters the cabin just in time to see Skye buckling herself in beside Fitz. Coulson is on his other side and while May is in the cockpit, ready to guide them down for as soft a landing as they can get away with. There are two free seats on either side of Ward. Of course someone has to sit next to him (because he certainly won’t do them all the courtesy of sitting at the far end), but it’s clear from the looks that come over the others’ faces that none of them even remembered her. Fitz makes a move to stand, only to have it cut short by the straps and buckles already holding him firmly in place.

Ward just smiles, same as he did in the briefing room. “I saved you a seat,” he says.

The plane gives another lurch and Jemma’s stomach, unused to air travel after all this time, lurches along with it.

“Buckle in!” May yells over her shoulder. Not needing any further encouragement, Jemma runs for the seat next to Ward.

When she grips the seat cushion and tries not to think about plummeting to the earth from an impossible height for the second time in her life, a warm, calloused hand forces its way between her palm and the rough texture of the upholstery. She’s not as strong as she used to be but she still must hurt his fingers with how tight she holds on. He doesn’t make even a hint of complaint.

The landing is rough and the mission itself promises to be just as bad. Coulson, May, and Fitz break off at the first opportunity to do … something. Jemma’s not involved in their portion of the plan and didn’t pay attention to that part of the briefing. That leaves her with Skye, Ward, and the brainwashed individual everyone assures her was very, very evil before Ward did this to him. Their job is to find and recover Mike Peterson—who was, as it turns out, being controlled via threats on his son’s life the last time they encountered him—as well as Skye’s new friend, Lincoln.

Jemma’s trying not to think about that—about Skye and her new friends and this new place she’s been where she finally found her parents—just as she’s trying not to think about Hunter, the man who returned with Fitz and appeared to be the best of friends with him and Coulson. The old team—Jemma’s team—is gone, broken apart and merged into other, larger groups that she either doesn’t know at all or doesn’t _want_ to.

Like May and the Council. But Jemma is trying not to think about that.

It becomes impossible to avoid those thoughts however, when Skye displays her newfound powers. They’re incredible and part of Jemma wants to stop everything and run a dozen tests before they move on. That part, however, has grown ever smaller over the last few months and what Jemma does, in the face of Skye’s transformation, is cringe back.

A steady arm holds her and she feels Ward’s “okay then” rumble out of him. The arm falls away the moment Skye turns her attention back to them—she’s already taken out all of those men with no sign of exertion at all—and levels a glare at him.

“Come on,” she says gruffly and, on top of everything else, Jemma’s left wondering when Skye started ordering anyone about.

“Bakshi?” Ward says softly as they follow. “Protect Simmons, okay?”

“Happy to, sir.”

Skye’s too far ahead to have heard, but Jemma’s not. She meets Ward’s eyes over her shoulder. She should be indignant but she can only feel grateful. She really has no idea what she’s doing here. Theoretically she’s going to provide medical assistance but there’s little she’ll be able to manage while in transport aside from keeping the men stable and May and Coulson both know enough to do that.

Bakshi knows the facility well and directs them straight to Peterson. Lincoln has already been removed to surgery and, after only a moment’s hesitation at leaving Jemma alone, Skye rushes to find him by herself.

“So,” Peterson says, his eye bouncing between her and Ward like he’s trying to decide where to start. He settles on her with a smile. “SHIELD finally found you. I told Coulson you’d turn up, you’re tougher than they give you credit for.”

Jemma pulls up the bandage on his leg more forcefully than she means to. The others have all expressed similar sentiments, though theirs were variations on “you’re alive.” It made it easier to focus on her survival rather than the circumstances of it, but Peterson’s phrasing lays bare the crux of her troubles.

She must give some sign of her feelings because he says, “Hey-” and reaches for her.

She presses the bandage back in place with familiar motions. It’s been a long time since she played medic, but her fingers still remember how well enough.

“You seem to be in stable condition, but we’ll need a gurney to get you out on.” She removes her sidearm from its holster and hands it to him. “We’ll be back soon.” She stands on shaky legs and bustles past Ward, keeping her head down to avoid his eyes.

Bakshi, true to his orders, hurries ahead of her once she’s in the hall and Ward falls into step behind her.

“You shouldn’t have given him that,” he says.

“He needs to be able to protect himself.”

“So do you.”

Bakshi stops them at a crossroads and Jemma fidgets with the cuff of her sleeve simply for something to do with her hands. “I was never a very good shot and I haven’t had much practice lately.”

She can feel Ward staring and his “Simmons…” is all too heartfelt. She’s beyond grateful when Bakshi moves on.

He takes them to a disorganized storage room just around the corner and, as luck would have it, they find a gurney waiting at the door. Ward orders Bakshi back into the hall to watch for trouble and sets about checking the gurney’s structural stability—a wise decision, given that everything in this base looks to be falling apart.

“Coulson’s got plans to use the TAHITI machine on me, erase my memories so I won’t be a threat to society anymore.” He says it like it’s nothing, like he’s talking about the weather, but there’s a twist on _threat to society_ that reminds her of the things he said after he touched the berserker staff. He buckles and unbuckles the last of the straps and then sets them down to smile at her. “So you can guess why I won’t be coming back with the rest of you.”

He’s leaving now. That’s why he’s telling her. He doesn’t want her worrying over where he’s disappeared to. She tries not to think about being left alone, left behind (again), but the only other thing she can think to focus on is Coulson’s plan to erase Ward’s memories. She opens her mouth to deny it but before she can speak, remembers that while she waited impatiently to see Coulson with her own eyes, she overheard Weaver ordering that the TAHITI machine be checked to see it was in working order.

That anyone would consider such a form of punishment is disturbing, but Coulson, who spent months struggling to reconcile his implanted memories with reality…

She doesn’t know him anymore. She doesn’t know Skye or May—even Fitz has all but forgotten her when they used to be two halves of the same whole.

Ward’s hand settles between her shoulder blades and she realizes she’s bent over the gurney in what must be a frightening manner. She drags in a breath and straightens herself. His hand remains where it is.

“Are you gonna be okay until Skye gets back? I can leave Bakshi.”

Jemma nods because she has to make some response. She goes through the motions of navigating the gurney into the hall for Bakshi to take over without thinking of where she is or what she’s doing. She thinks of the last few months and how desperately she held onto the hope of seeing the team again. She knows it’s not their fault. Life goes on and she wouldn’t have wanted them to stop living on her account. She’s beyond happy Skye’s finally found her family and Fitz has made new friends, but that doesn’t stop it hurting.

“Simmons?” Ward asks at the corner, stopping her. Bakshi keeps going on ahead. Ward looks over her carefully and whatever he sees seems to decide something for him. “Do you want to come with me?”

She blinks, caught off guard by the question. Go with him? With Ward, who- who’s the _bad guy_?

It’s unthinkable.

And yet she’s thinking about it.

She knows, intellectually, that Ward has done horrible things—she examined Koenig’s corpse herself, for goodness’ sake! She shouldn’t take comfort in his presence at her side or move closer to him in the face of danger. But she does do those things and, the truth is, she’s afraid of going back to the Playground. It’s their home, not hers. Hers was blown out of the air less than an hour ago while she clung tight to Ward’s hand, the same way she’s done a hundred times before, during a hundred other landings. She spent the last eight months dreaming of returning to the team and Ward might be all there is left of it.

“Yes,” she says softly and it sounds pathetically like a plea.

There’s something sharp in Ward’s expression now, something she didn’t see in him before today, but it does nothing to diminish the warmth of his gentle smile.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She’s thin, is her first thought looking in the full length mirror. She’s down to her underwear and can see the lines of too many bones beneath her skin. That’s what she gets for trying that hunger strike in month three.

“Who do I have to kill?”

She hadn’t heard Ward finish his shower, let alone the bathroom door opening. He steps out with the steam, his thunderous eyes fixed on her. She’s far beyond embarrassment at being seen undressed and doesn’t cringe away as he stalks closer. Her left hand wraps around her right side, feeling for the edges of the scar he’s staring at.

“No one,” she says, then amends the statement because it’s obvious that _someone_ shot her. “I don’t know who it was.”

She drops her hand and moves to the clothes she’s laid out on the bed. Ward welcomed her to anything on the right side of the dresser, assuring her their owner wouldn’t mind her borrowing.

“Was it Hydra?” he asks. The alternative hangs heavily beneath the words and she shakes her head to both.

Her fingers can’t seem to grasp the waist of the jeans properly, so instead of putting them on, she grabs the entire pile of clothes and holds them to her lap when she sits. Ward takes a seat a respectful distance away, still only in his towel.

“After-” she begins and immediately stops.

After he left. After he kidnapped Skye. After she found Agent Koenig’s body. He’s a murderer. She’s thrown in her lot with a murderer and a traitor and-

She cuts those thoughts off right there. Truth is, she’s too tired to care _what_ Ward is.

“General Talbot found us at Providence base,” she says. “Apparently Maria Hill led him there, only to immediately throw in her lot with us. Talbot wasn’t similarly inclined and, while we were making our escape, I was shot.”

When Fitz tried to spur her into coming along—it had happened so fast, he hadn’t noticed yet, none of them had—she smiled and told him he’d have to go on without her. Clearly she wouldn’t be moving anywhere on her own power at that point.

She can still remember so clearly the hardness of the bench beneath her, the discomfort of the cafeteria table digging into her back. It was worth it though; so long as she had its support, she was only in agony. If she dared to shift her weight away, darkness would well up at the edges of her vision.

“I need surgery,” she said while Trip tried to examine the wound and Coulson stared at her like she was his worst fear realized. With Italy only a few weeks behind them, she likely was. “The bullet needs to be removed and it’s low enough in my abdomen that-”

It was bad. And there was a distinct chance, even then, that she wouldn’t survive.

“Trip isn’t qualified to deal with this sort of injury—not without the promise of real medical aid in the near future—but Talbot has doctors who are. He won’t risk losing whatever intelligence I might have on your movements by letting me die, and you’re losing your window of opportunity. You need to go, sir.”

Trip and Maria Hill had to drag Fitz from the room. Coulson laid a hand on her shoulder and swore he would come for her, ordered her to be brave. It was the last time she saw any of them until four days ago.

“I was taken into Air Force custody,” she says, wiping at her cheek. “They held me at a military hospital for twenty-nine days.”

“And then?” Ward prompts.

She forces a pleasant smile. She might not, with anyone else, on account of how  _mean_ it feels on her face, but she imagines Ward won’t mind. “It’s amazing the things one can accomplish with a heart monitor, a few IV bags, and a pair of handcuffs.”

Ward returns her smile with a faintly cruel one. She doesn’t hate it.

He crosses to the dresser and pulls a pair of boxers from the top drawer. “So, I’m guessing that’s not the end?” he asks while he moves to the other side of the bed—behind her so he can safely remove the towel.

She keeps her eyes on the landscape hanging next to the bathroom door. “No, it’s not. I had no idea how to reach the others, but Weaver recruited me to SHIELD; she and I had a set place we were to meet should anything catastrophic occur.” It took her weeks to reach the spot. She spent more time hiding than traveling and made her way by a combination of hitchhiking, stowing away, and occasionally trading medical care for transportation. She was sure, by the time she arrived, that Weaver would have long since moved on but, on Jemma’s third day checking the park gazebo, there she was. “She took me to the _Iliad_ and- It was good. For a while.”

The mattress shakes so violently that Jemma nearly falls off. Ward, dressed only in the boxers, grins at her from where he fell across the bed. “Too good to be true?” he asks.

She nods. “Yes. I’m afraid so. It wasn’t long before they started asking about the team, more than was relevant to searching them out. They wanted to know _everything_ , with special emphasis on Coulson’s recovery after New York. When I finally demanded to know what was going on, they told me.”

Fury had handed over leadership of SHIELD to Coulson and, as far as the agents of the _Iliad_ were concerned, that meant Coulson couldn’t be trusted. They were obsessed with “fixing Fury’s mistakes,” as Gonzales put it, and couldn’t care to worry what Hydra might be doing.

“They were planning on infiltrating the team just like-” She cuts off, unsure how the end of that statement will be received.

“Just like me,” Ward fills in for her. He makes an odd sort of sideways shrug from his spot on the bed. It’s not an apology but it is, sadly, the closest she’s had to one in a long time.

“Yes. When I refused to help them and attempted to warn the team, I was deemed-” She closes her eyes, remembering Gonzales’ voice pronouncing judgment before she was led away- “uncooperative. They confined me to quarters at first, made attempts at ‘talking sense’ into me, but after my second escape attempt, they couldn’t rightly let me near the labs anymore. After that they stopped with the pretense.”

“How did you get out?” Ward asks, a strange tension in his voice.

She looks at her hands. The shirt she’s borrowed is terribly wrinkled. “May. She started working with them and…”

The look on May’s face when she walked into Jemma’s cell isn’t something she thinks she’ll forget anytime soon. She would have felt guilty if May had capitulated to Gonzales’ demands to save her but she would have understood—after eight months of isolation, she would have understood a great many things—but May gave in without even knowing she was alive, let alone in that cell.

“Coulson kept me locked up,” Ward says, his tone light, conversational. “Used me for intel on Hydra. I made a few attempts at getting out.” He twists his arm, giving her a clear view of the scars she’s been trying not to look at. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” he says sincerely.

A chime from his phone spares her the trouble of answering through the lump in her throat. He rolls off the bed and grabs the phone, shutting off the alert with barely a glance before he starts opening drawers, pulling out jeans and a shirt.

“I’m not sorry you’re alive though,” he says, glancing at her while he dresses. “I thought-”

“Thought what?” She’s desperate to know suddenly. She knows so little of the last months and she’d like this little bit filled in, if she can have it.

Ward lets out a long breath while he settles his leather jacket over his shoulders. He’s not looking at her or at the walls of the room, he’s looking at something far away. “Fitz came down to visit me. When he started sucking all the oxygen out of my cell, I told him to go get you or Skye. His reaction was pretty telling.”

He takes her hands, stops them rubbing at her wrists. “I’ve gotta go,” he says. “Kara and I have got some work to do.”

“Kara?” She’s never heard Ward say anyone’s name like that.

Or smile the way he does thinking of her. “Agent 33.”

She nods, more because it’s the expected thing than because she truly recognizes the alias. She thinks he might mean the dark haired woman who was getting a physical at the same time Jemma was—they shared a conspiratorial look over their doctors’ heads, she seemed nice—but she can’t be certain. There were so many new people to meet…

“It’ll probably take a few days,” he says. “It … might not be a great idea for you to come.”

She frowns while his thumb sweeps over the sensitive skin at her pulse point. “Are you going to hurt the team?”

“Depends on who you consider the team these days,” he says. He doesn’t lie or feign innocence. He’s going to hurt someone, but he owns up to it. It’s sad that that’s refreshing.

“Anyone who lived on the Bus,” she says. She would add Trip to that but he’s been conspicuously absent since her return and she suspects she knows why.

He shakes his head. “Nah. This isn’t about them. It’s about Morse, what she did while she was infiltrating the team.”

She frowns. What could Morse have done that was so terrible? Even Ward, who was Hydra, never hurt anyone—anyone undeserving, at least—to get in the team’s good graces.

“She handed Kara over to Hydra for brainwashing.”

“Oh.” It’s the best response Jemma can muster through the hollow in her chest. Somehow she isn’t surprised in the least.

“Yeah,” Ward agrees. Apparently he doesn’t consider it out of character for a member of the _Iliad’s_ crew either. “I’ll leave Bakshi. He’ll protect you as best he can, but that’s not really his field.” He slides a box out from beneath the bed. In it are passports, money in various currencies, and a phone, which he quickly programs. “This has my number and Kara’s number. Anything happens while I’m gone or you just get lonesome and need to talk, don’t hesitate to call, all right?”

She nods slowly while trying to ignore the way the walls of the room seem to close in.

His pitying look is sympathetic. “I know you’re scared, but I will come back for you, all right?”

It’s not that. Despite all Ward’s done, he’s never failed to return to them. Even when he was Hydra, he came to Providence—for his own nefarious reasons, surely, but that doesn’t change the fact he did.

“The others,” she says softly, hating herself for even thinking it.

Understanding washes over his face and he squeezes her hand back. “Trust me. If they had any idea where we were, they’d have stormed in here by now to rescue you. No one’s gonna hurt you. Now, can you be brave for me? Four days at most, I promise.”

She nods. She’s been alone before. At least here she’ll have Bakshi, little company that he is, and the freedom to go outside if she so chooses.

“Good girl.” Ward wraps her hands around the phone, giving them a squeeze while he stands. He presses a warm kiss to the top of her head and then he’s gone.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He’s back three days later with thunder in his eyes and blood soaked through his shirt.

She shakes while she orders him to sit at the tiny kitchen table, but her hands are steady as they ever were in the lab when she opens the medkit she finds on top of the fridge. He’s silent while she works. Silent and seething, same as he was after touching the berserker staff. The only difference is that this time he isn’t demanding answers or quick fixes. He’s just … sitting.

The third time she looks to the door, he finally speaks. “Kara’s dead.”

She stops cleaning the cut on his cheek, as stunned by the words as the crack in his voice.

He meets her eyes. “May killed her.”

Jemma sinks into the only other chair, feeling that same emptiness she did when he told her what Morse had done. This time it aches.

“You can still go back.” His voice is hard, his eyes like ice. “Coulson thinks I kidnapped you. You can go back, play nice with Morse and her friends, let Fitz finally get up the guts to tell you he’s in love with you, be part of the team again.”

She waits because his tone doesn’t at all match what he’s saying and there has to be more. But he seems determined to make her speak. She sets the gauze aside and folds her hands in her lap. “Or?” she prompts.

“I’m gonna make them pay. Morse. May. All of SHIELD. The people who locked us up, who stole our lives? Those people aren’t our friends. Not anymore. Up to now I haven’t made them my enemies, but after this?”

His fists open between them. There’s too much blood on them to have come from any of his injuries.

“They deserve everything I’m gonna do to them.”

She studies his face. There’s a wildness in his eyes she’s only seen a handful of times. Before it was always carefully leashed, now she knows he intends on letting it run free.

“How long did they keep you cuffed?” he asks.

She looks down at her hands, held closely together in her lap. There are no physical scars any longer, but she still isn’t quite used to being without the impediment. “Too long.”

He makes a sound that isn’t quite a laugh. “Bastards.” He grabs a wetnap from the box and tears it open to start cleaning his palms. “I’ll drop you at your parents’. The others are sure to be watching, they’ll pick you up from there.”

She reaches out, takes his hands in her own. The motion seems to surprise him and he doesn’t fight when she starts cleaning off the blood herself. “Or I stay with you, help you fight the people who hurt us both.”

“Yeah,” he says roughly. “Yeah, those are pretty much your options.”

She would like there to be a door number three, a possibility of going her own way, back into the civilian world. But even if she could get around her pesky criminal record, there’s the trouble that SHIELD will never let her go. That was made quite clear to her on the _Iliad_.

She scrubs at his wrist, at the blood that’s settled into the grooves of the scar. “When do we start?”

She doesn’t mind his sharp smile. She thinks she might even like it.

 


End file.
